Campus gallery showcases craft and material faculty work
Faculty ‘Four Play’ exhibit leaves you wanting more
Samantha Foster
Contributing Writer
The Fine Arts Building Gallery is currently showcasing the art of four VCU faculty members.
Playing off the number of artists in the gallery, the show is called “Four Play” and includes the art of Ariel Brice, Emily Hermant, Christopher McElroy and Stephanie Voegele.
Brice, who currently teaches in the clay concentration of craft and material studies, describes her art as “the overlap between craft, design and art with humorous and thoughtful deconstructions of utility.”
Her piece displays her humorous side. “Ideally, It Would Be” is a depiction of dozens of green, red and silver thumbs-up “like” symbols from Facebook.
Hermant crafted a sizeable wooden sculpture for the center of the gallery. Her work is “continually drawn to themes and modes of working in which simplicity serves as basis for complex, layered work.”
Hermant is teaching in the fiber concentration of the craft and material studies this year.
McElroy describes his art as “an investigation of bodily function and awareness in relation to degrees of psychological comfort and sanctuary.”
McElroy contributed a collection of objects, all thought at some point to bestow the power of invisibility, including an Appalachian micro-still.
This year, McElroy is teaching in the glass concentration of craft and
material studies.
Voegele describes her art as aiming “to unify what lives beneath with what is worn on the surface.”
Her pieces in “Four Play” include a collection of three rubber sculptures of women’s upper bodies adorned with strings of pearls and photographs of the busts on their models.
Voegele is teaching in the metals concentration of the craft and material studies this year.
Photos by Amber-Lynn Taber
